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Foursquare – Our favourite location-based social network/micro-blogging site on the web is getting better with each passing day. Even though it’s still to catch the attention of the Indian asses and more importantly the brands/stores. But, the day is not far when we will start getting our cup of free coffee at the nearest CCD/Costa in reward of gaining mayorship. Foursquare Hits 2 Million Check-ins, 25K New Users Daily. The reason for its success is that its one of its kind, even though it has a list of competitors (Gowalla, Rally, Rummble, Plyce, Tellmewhere, Mobnotes, BlockChalk, Yelp, Brightkite, Grindr, Shoutitout, Friendticker, Dailyplaces, Geodruid , Whrrl, hummba.com, feest.je, WeReward.com, Where, Facebook, Check.In, Loopt, Hotlist).

Foursquare has been adding functionality and improving very rapidly, features like venue descriptions and website links were added two weeks. The most recent feature and also the most important one was added last week, the ability to add pictures with your check-ins. Now when the picture feature was added, we all wondered if we could collect all the pictures posted as check-ins in one place/platform like – FB, Flickr, Picassa etc. Facebook was out of the question as they have their own places feature, the only viable options left were Flickr and Picassa. Ofcourse, A new service called 4Photo or 4Pic could have been launched following the suite of tweetphoto or twitpic but that would have been a cumbersome deal so instead it’s FlickSquare for us.

How Foursquare works:

Foursquare is a location-based social network that incorporates gaming elements.

Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smart phone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users who have checked in the most times at a certain venue will be crowned “Mayor” until someone surpasses their number. Various venues have embraced Foursquare, and offer special deals to users who are “mayors”.

Inspired by a tweet from First Round Capital VC Charlie O’Donnell (“Can someone hack a Foursquare app that cc’s my checkin photos to Flickr?”), developer Benny Wong has created Flicksquare, an app that takes advantage of Foursquare’s recent enabling of photo check-in features, allowing you to also send your Foursquare photos to Flickr.

This will make life simpler :

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Once you are done with the six steps mentioned above – You are ready to go!

Samsung appears to have delayed upgrading its flagship Galaxy S blower to Android 2.2 FroYo. The mobile maker has taken to Facebook over in Spain, where it’s told punters to expect its arrival in late October. If you were counting the days until the Froyo update hits the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S then you’ll have to count longer than expected. The update has been delayed in Spain and India and possibly other regions too.

Samsung Galaxy S - Froyo delayed again ?

There’s no official press release yet, instead the bad news trickled through Facebook (the Spanish page) and Twitter (the Samsung India account). Though the update will be available through Samsung Kies whenever its launched.

These are the two sources that claim that the launch has been delayed till October end. Till then, Let’s wait for the official word from Samsung.

Not many people know that Bada (pronounced /ˈbɑːdɑː/ not as Bada-Chota in Hindi) is a proprietary mobile operating system developed by Samsung Electronics. It is designed to cover both high-end smartphones and lower-end feature phones. Samsung claims that bada will rapidly replace its proprietary feature phone platform, converting feature phones to smartphones. The name ‘bada‘ is derived from 바다, the Korean word for ocean or sea. And that is the reason ‘Samsung’ named their first Bada device as Wave. So we can say that Samsung has created a Wave in the Ocean(Bada). And if the figure are to be believed they have already successfully done that as Samsung announced 83% net profit rise year-on-year in the second quarter to $3.6bln.

Wave in the Ocean(BADA)

Samsung announced the bada platform on 10 November, 2009. After the launch, companies such as Twitter, EA, Capcom, Gameloft, and Blockbuster showed their support for the bada platform. After the announcement, Wave S8500 was first shown in Mobile World Congress 2010 in Spain in Feb 2010. At that time tens of applications running on the first bada phone were demonstrated such as Asphalt 5 by Gameloft.

Samsung started to release SDK for bada to attract individual developers. During May 2010, Samsung released bada SDK 1.0.0b2, followed by 1.0.0b3 released in late May, 2010. In addition, Samsung started the bada Developer Challenge with a total prize of $2,700,000 (USD).

The first bada-based phone was the Wave S8500, released on June 1, 2010,and in its first 4 weeks on the market shipped one million handsets.

Before I tell you people more about how the Wave is on High-tide, have a look at the official 4D launch event for the Wave.

At the release day of the Samsung Wave, Samsung opened an international application store, Samsung Apps, for the bada platform.

In July 2010, Samsung Apps had 300 applications to offer, 70% of them being free. Samsung expects to have 7000 applications in its application store by the end of 2010.

Features of BADA

Even though bada supports a wide range of devices, bada is powerful enough to turn your imagination into powerful applications. With high end devices such as Wave, bada fully utilizes the power of hardware for the ultimate application experience. Even with mid-range or cost-effective models, it also provides powerful features for better application experiences.

Features such as plenty of UI controls, Flash support, and sensor support help applications to be more interactive. Service-centric features such as in-app-purchasing, SNS integration, and push notification help applications to offer customers a richer, more interactive experience.

Architecture for the Geeks

BADA, as Samsung defines it, is not an operating system, but platform with a kernel configurable architecture, which allows the use of either proprietary Real-time operating system(RTOS) kernel, or the Linux kernel. According to copyrights displayed by Samsung Wave S8500, it’s based on BSD, not Linux.

On top of the kernel, there are Device, Service, and Framework Layers respectively. Device Layer provides core functions of a device such as graphics, protocols, telephony, security, etc. Service Layer provides more service-centric features such as SNS, map, in-app-purchasing, and so on. To provide such features, Samsung operates, so called, bada Server, behind the scene. The top layer, Framework Layer, provides Application Programming Interface in C++ language to developers.

bada provides various UI controls to developers: It provides assorted basic UI controls such as Listbox, Color Picker, Tab, etc. In addition, it has a web browser control based on the open-source WebKit, and also features Adobe Flash, supporting Flash 9. Both WebKit and Flash can be embedded inside native bada applications. bada offers interactive mapping withPoint of interest (POI) features, which can also be embedded inside native applications.It supports pinch-to-zoom, tabbed browsing, as well as cut, copy, and paste.

bada supports various mechanisms to enhance interaction: various sensors, such as motion sensing, vibration control, face detection, accelerometer, magnetometer, tilt, and GPS, which can be incorporated into applications,is one feature and multipoint-touch is also supported.

Native applications are developed in C++ with the bada SDK, and the Eclipse based IDE. GNU based tool chains are used for building and debugging applications. The IDE also contains UI Builder, with which developers can easily design the interface of their applications by dragging and dropping UI controls into forms. For testing and debugging the, IDE contains a simulator, where apps can be run.

What to worry about?

As every tide has a High-tide it has a Low-tide too. Even though the Samsung Wave has broken all sales record there are a few things that Samsung need to address and consumer need to know :-

Bada’s application store is closed, and users are prevented from downloading apps from other sources

The external sensor API is not open-ended, preventing new types of sensors or unexpected technology developments from being added in the future.

Bada application framework only allows one Bada application at a time. Multitasking is possible between the base applications stored in ROM and one Bada application.

Some have speculated that the market is too crowded to accept a new operating system.

This may sound a bit lame but Maybe Samsung should look closer at the Bada name because the first three letters indicate what kind of idea this is: B-A-D.

My take on BADA

Bada looks like a solid smartphone environment and the Wave device appears potent — the phone runs on a 1GHz chip with an 800×480 resolution AMOLED display and can record video in 720p high-definition. Based on specifications alone, the Wave competes well with the latest and greatest handsets on the market. But is that enough to compete against the ever growing Android Devices by almost all the OEM’s (Except Nokia). What I perceive here is that Samsung doesn’t want to get lost in the herd with other OEM’s who are rolling out Android phone’s one after the another. So the war is not just with other manufactures but internally also as Samsung itself has Galaxy S (Android Device) competing with Wave(Bada Device). In the end, Bada as on OS and Wave as handset is a bold step by Samsung to hold its own niche market of developers and consumers so it wont be a surprise for me if it goes on to be a hit.

Just enrolled for the first beta program for BlackBerry since I bought my BB Bold 9000. Only the BlackBerry platform was left in my portfolio as I hadn’t tested for it till now but looking forward to be a beta tester for them. As a Beta Tester, it is very important to be critical in your review of an application or a product so be prepared for some scrutiny. Here are some screenshots on how to join the BlackBerry Beta Zone, available list of programs for Beta Testers and also step by step guide on how to install the BBM 5.0 . For further queries contact me onBBM – 20e50398 (RIP BOLD 9000)22CB8B16 or Twitter – @nikhilchawla.

BB Beta zone

BB Beta tester

BB Beta Programs

BBM 5.0

BBM 5.0 Registration Form

BBM 5.0 Agreement Form

BBM 5.0 Download

BBM 5.0 Download & Keynote

BBM 5.0 Install

BBM 5.0 Install 100

BBM 5.0 Install complete

PS: Even after the download & installation of BBM 5.0 is completed in your device you would have to wait for the Keynote to arrive in your mail from the BlackBerry Team and an estimated waiting time for it is 48hours.

For all those who are Twitter freaks and their life revolves around #(Hash-tags), @(Reply),RT(Re-tweet) then try this phenomenal application called Seesmic Look. All of us agree that twitter is a storm that can’t be stopped similarly Seesmic Look is a beauty that can’t be ignored. It’s simply a delight for people who love visually appealing graphical user interface (Windows 7 users). I can go on and on about it but pictures speak louder than words so lets do it that way.

This is from their website :

Seesmic Look is a unique way to immerse yourself in the real-time web. Optimized for Windows 7, this innovative interface allows you to feel the pulse of millions of users or be inspired by individuals of your specific interest. Beginners learning to understand real-time can stay engaged and connected without even logging into Twitter, while experienced users can take advantage of Look’s powerful features in creative and imaginative ways.

Interests
Find accounts and view tweets that match your qualities and style you might have in common. In Seesmic Look,”Interests” are lists of twitter accounts represented by categories such as news, sports, entertainment, celebrities, music, politics, humor, culture, business, and style. You can choose any one of those categories to view all the tweets of that particular category or explore your interests in a specific twitter account.

Login to Look
When you log into Look you can save your favorite twitter feeds as well as your saved searches so your settings are the same every time you login. If you don’t already have a twitter account creating one is easy. Click on username at the top of look then then click create account. You will be directed to twitter’s sign up page where you can quickly create a new twitter account.

Trends
Discover what millions of users are saying in the Twitterverse. By using Trends, you can find out what’s popular now, in the past day or in the past week. In Look, you can learn why a word or phrase is trending and view all the trends or specific topics in timeline or playback mode.

Search
Track any word or phrase being said on twitter in real time and display it in Look’s unique playback interface. Search a person, brand, or any other interest you may have, and save that search so you can always refer back to it.

Inbox and Social
The inbox and social timeline features becomes readily available when you log into Look. View and manage your Mentions, Direct Messages and Sent Message in the Inbox section. In the Social section, view your friends timeline of the accounts your following including Twitter Lists

Timeline or Playback Mode / Light or Dark Theme
View Twitter in a standard timeline view or observe the stream of messages in Look’s distinguished playback mode which fades in messages in a visually engaging way. Match your theme by choosing a light or dark background.